Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Arizona: Life, Liberty and Closed Property

from Slate.com

by William Norman Grigg

Which is the more serious threat to life, liberty and property: The illicit violence practiced by a handful of furtive armed drug smugglers in the Arizona desert, or the increasingly brazen militarization of U.S. law enforcement – across the entire country – in the "war on drugs"?

According to some hyperventilating commentators, drug smugglers – with the guilty acquiescence of Barack Obama – have seized control of a huge swath of Arizona, thereby asserting alien sovereignty over what was once American soil. If this were true, points out libertarian journalist (and Arizona resident) J.D. Tuccille, the narcotics lords would preside over a kingdom "populated by rattlesnakes and cholla."